Comments

Comment by Kboon

This is the hard mode version of this encounter. How to activate the hard mode has changed so many times on PTR, but most likely this will be started by destroying the 4 towers found throughout the area filled with trash before Flame Leviathan.

Comment by JaxOmen

It'll be "hard mode" if you leave all four towers up.

Comment by Maliander

Kill the Flame Leviathan on the hardest hard-mode on heroic difficulty.

There are 4 defence towers in the gauntlet leading to the Flame Leviathan which can be activated by talking to the Lore Keeper of Norgannonbefore talking to Brann to start the gauntlet. Activating a tower and leaving it intact will activate a unique Orbital Defense System on the Leviathan. Each Defense System grants the Leviathan an extra ability, increases his health by 40% (multiplicative!), gives him a unique buff and increases the number of Emblems. Killing the Leviathan with all Defence Systems active is the hardest hard mode and allows the raid to get the Heroic: Orbit-uary achievement, 3 Emblems of Conquest and 1 piece of loot from the Hard-Mode loot table, in addition to the normal loot.

The following abilities complicate the fight when all 4 Defense Systems are active:

Tower of Frost:Hodir's Fury - Frost damage and entombs vehicles near the impact point in ice. Entombed vehicles are stunned for 1 minute, taking damage over time. The tomb can be destroyed with fire damage, a single cannon shot will suffice. Also slows players for 20%

Comment by IrishHero

The tower has to be destroyed to activate the 'hard mode' event, rather then leaving them active.

Comment by militriax

World first on this achievement is the guild Insomnia from the server U.S server Tichondrius. Achieved 15th April 3:30 EST. Congratulations to them!

Edit

OT: Wowhead says I posted this patch 3.0.9 QQ

Comment by Leonan

US score :/

Guild Insomnia on US realm Tichondrius defeated Flame Leviathan in hard mode at 12:30AM PDT on April 15th, 2009 and our servers are down heh

Comment by Evilhealbot

Sorry, I should have seen the above.

Comment by militriax

Why was my post downrated? If you downrate youu may aswell say what I did wrong..

Edit: I'll delete this post when my other one isn't faded anymore.

Comment by 309blank

because world firsts have nothing to do on this site, thats why. this is an information site, not a bragging site. gz to the kill but that is not useful information!

Comment by militriax

Info as info. Maybe less important info but it's still info about the achievement.

Comment by CorvusAter

Unfortunately, it does not contribute any information about the achievement nor would it help anyone in how to secure the achievement.

Comment by CorvusAter

Unfortunately, it does not contribute any information about the achievement nor would it help anyone in how to secure the achievement.

Comment by Evilhealbot

Please explain by what criteria when and by who the achievement was first gained does not constitute information about it.

Comment by 309blank

of course it constitutes information about it. BUT it is the same as stupid remarks like: I solod this q as an xyz with lvl ...

if you dont post viable strats, bugs or anything else that is of value for people struggling, then its not information but useless bragging. his post would have been good if he posted USEFUL information. Why do people visit this site? not to read who got what first, thats already posted on mmo-champ, but to get help for the game.

Comment by Taten

No Leo, you need to talk to Norgannon to activate the towers in 25's Ulduar

Comment by odok

There are two ways to activate the Hard Mode.

If you speak to Brann to begin the encounter, you must destroy the towers to activate the hard modes.

If you speak to the Lore Keeper of Norgannon to begin the encounter, all four hard modes are activated immediately and you must destroy the towers to deactivate the hard modes.

Comment by Matumbo

The Leviathan has a total of 354 Million HP with all four towers, that's A LOT !

To the first post I would like to add the fact that each tower does not increse the Leviathan's damage by 15%. The Mimiron tower increases fire damage done by the boss by 50%, and the Thorim tower increases his physical damage done by 10%. Their effect on the Leviathan is not the same, so that we can choose which tower to break (for the weakest among us :) ).

Comment by Halryn

I think this is like 3D Sartharion. But harder.. WAY harder

Comment by Evilhealbot

First kill on the latest (i.e. buffed) version to Vodka on the 2/5/2009. The original first was by Irae AoD.

Comment by Strykerliath

Also downed post "buff" after a few hours of attempts. Not that difficult once everyone understands the mechanics ;)

Comment by karrgo

" Hello children, my name is Dr. Adams and welcome to the plane-arium.

I thought it was planetarium?

Well it is, but I have a bone disease which impedes my ability to pronounce the T in plane-arium. "

Comment by Bliksem

What a silly bunt.

Comment by crank88

Comment by CanadianSniper

This fight is all about keeping your pyrite stacks up, getting those System Overloads down fast, controlling Freya's adds, shooting down Pyrite, and not dying to stupid stuff. If 25 people can do this then you're good to go.

Comment by tarunloko

I can confirm that in Cataclysm this achievement has become incredibly easy, due to the increased gear ilevel vehicles now have from 3-6 million health, making it almost impossible for them to die on the boss

Comment by taggme

quoting windscar(from the ulduar 25m achieve) the difference between ilvl213 to ilvl226 for every slot can give you up to 200k more hp.

so... yeah with item lvl 348+... you should have no trouble getting both this achievement and the Unbroken achievements

simply take a moment for your demolishers to load up on pyrite(shoot down extra if you feel like it before starting) and launch 7-8 of the pyrite bullets, let it tick for a moment and then get it to 9 stacks and (having dodged the tower affects) /achieve unlocked!

if you or one of your raid members talks to the wrong person.. make sure you leave the raid, reset, and just go back in.^^ or /facepalm and have to wait a week.

Comment by Kedarnath

This achievement has become rather easy. However, if you have a raid group full of bads this is still very easy to wipe. Most of the people doing Ulduar are doing achievements for the drake and that means many of them have never even seen Ulduar before.

Comment by quinzds

Just so you know,

This can't be soloed at all. You need at least 4 people to work with to down this guy with this archievement triggering hardmode.

I've done it with 6 and it was still tough you can do it with 4 but will require practice.

Any other archievement is pretty much soloable, just not this one. Because its not a gear check.

Comment by DELmightymoo99

EDIT: Almost a year later, and the OP I made can basically be ignored. I took a toon in last night and solo'ed it. Just make sure you have a full stack of Pyrite, and do not switch seats to load up more as it resets the fight, unless you park a second vehicle, as FL will redirect to that.

Only thing to really watch out for is the frost beams - they still kill.

Original post: We finally completed this tonight with my guild on our second go of the evening. We took 7 of us. 4 hunters, a priest (shadowform), druid (guardian) and an arcane mage. We did go with 4 of us the week before, but we kept getting overwhelmed by the adds at around 61% consistently. However this really helped us learn the mechanics and what worked well and didn't for us.

Our vehicle make up was 3 demos and a bike. Two demos were loaded with passengers, one was just a single player and the bike was to help get the adds and transport some of us back to the demos.

The key for us for this fight was to get the overload in place as soon as possible, and keep overloading the boss. Before the start we shot down pyrite for about 15 seconds, and engaged before it vanished. We pulled by launching our passengers, dropped an oil slick (which we then fired at to ignite) and took out the turrets to overload the boss right away. Kept up the pyrite stacks to 10, and rinsed and repeated. The player on the bike was rather busy, if we'd had more people we'd have brought a 2nd bike to help out.

I do think this could be done on a 5, as long as you have a good rotation to take out the turrets and get back up there asap while ensuring the pyrite stacks are up and the adds are not too overwhelming. It's absolutely not soloable in my opinion.

Note: If you do get stuck up on the boss (can't get the last turret and the second person isn't yet launched) and you're ranged you can DPS the adds from on top of the boss. You can also, if you're outside of a vehicle and have an interrupt, interrupt the flame vents.

This is still a great fight as it makes you think and work as a team. I do hope Blizz don't nerf it :)

Best of luck to those still after this achi!

Comment by pouchhead

Solo'd this today as a Balance Druid. It wasn't easy and took some immense concentration over a long period of time. DBM recorded my kill time as 79 minutes and 49 seconds.

I kited the boss in Travel Form in a circle around the square of the encounter zone while maintaining Moonfire/Sunfire as much as I could. Make sure to cut the corners (hence in a circle) or else he gets a pretty good chance to catch up. From time to the time I would pop into Cat Form to Thrash the adds (Thrash is omnidirectional, so you don't have to stop moving or turn around) as they would start to become so copious that they started affecting my framerate.

Some notes:

I have Feline Swiftness, Pandaren's Step enchant on boots, and +2% movement speed for being a Night Elf. This makes my movement speed in travel form 167%. This was enough to keep me ahead of the boss amidst keeping the dots up and taking care of the adds.

After FL reaches 20 stack of "Gathering Speed," it starts ticking down from 10 minutes. After the buff wears off, it has to rebuild from nothing. I always took this as an opportunity to "nuke" the boss by spamming Moonfire/Sunfire and use Starfall whenever it was off cooldown.

DO NOT STOP MOVING. Hodir's Fury (the blue beam) will always be chasing after you for the entirety of the encounter and will freeze you if it catches you and cause a wipe.

Comment by ratspootin

Achievement Log Bug NoteNot sure if this is a new bug that came with 6.0.2 or it's been around for a while, but if you click on Orbit-uary (25 Player) from the Glory of the Ulduar Raider (25 player) achievement in-game, it will link you to Orbital Bombardment (25 player), which requires leaving 1 Orbital Defense System up. You still need all 4 up for Glory of the Ulduar Raider (25 player).

Comment by Hannibal08

Easily completed this in 6.0.2 with an item level of 557. I simply stayed in the same catapult that I started with and applied stacks to the boss. I rushed through the first 4 applications but let those afterwards tick for most of their durations before adding the next. Just as I was about to lose my vehicle to damage the Flame Leviathan was destroyed. I was prepared to use my survival cooldowns for a few seconds should that happen, but the boss died before it became necessary.

This is vastly easier than it was pre-6.0.2 where I needed to use two vehicles and some luck to complete the 10 man version of this same achievement. The new scaling with item level is a huge help. Oddly it didn't seem to help at all with clearing the trash leading up to this boss, which is the most mind-numbing part of the Ulduar runs.

Comment by Seahnjin

Soloed as an ilvl 540 rogue. Not exactly easy... Went into a demo, flung pyrite at it by spacing the throws enough so that I got the most out of its ticks. Put 10 stacks on it while attacking it with the other attacks since by then it will be right in your face. My vehicle broke down when the Leviathan had like 1 million HP left, I popped all cooldowns + double evasion. Leeching poison does NOT work on the Leviathan, so the adds are a godsend.

EDIT : Oh man, reading other comments, I didn't even realize you could move several demo's before starting the fight.

I must also admit something else : before beating the boss I didn't know it was hard mode. I hadn't been to Ulduar often and had never started the encounter myself before, so I just talked to the first NPC I saw : Titan looking dude. I should have known something was up when Brann and the other NPCs said something about how stupid I was to talk to Titan Dude. The Leviathan wrecked my face but I thought it was just one of those vehicle fights that didn't properly scale with gear. After 4 wipes, I kicked its ass and 4 achievements popped up and I was like ? oops what have I done

Comment by Wheeljack

A tactic I found to be useful was actually after I'd first wiped once. When you res after a wipe and port to Formation Grounds, all of the vehicles spawn right outside the combat-area.

I moved 4 of them inside and engaged. Jumped in the first Demolisher and nuked until I ran out of Pyrite, by then Flame Leviathan had 10 stacks ticking and he was already very low on HP. I jumped out of the demo, ran to the second and full on nuked with Pyrite. The entire fight was over after 52 seconds.

Unless you go for Unbroken (25 player), this may just seem to be the way to go. I tried to move two Demos into the area before I engaged for the first time, but the first kept being destroyed just as I entered the area with the second one.

The character I used had mostly upgraded Timeless-gear, iLevel 545.

Comment by alpanhell

Did it 25 man pretty easy. Just made sure 2 demos were in the starting area. Started the fight on one, stacked 10 cannisters on boss. Jumped on 2nd demo and used cannisters to keep up buff. Didn't even have to move demos and boss died.

Comment by Porrim

It was actually pretty straightforward. I parked three demos in the southwest corner (southeast corner is a bit further out, and might be a better choice), and more or less bum-rushed it.

Basically, spam pyrite to ten stacks, switch to next demo, repeat, switch to last demo, repeat -- if you can. I came across the issue of not being able to make it to the third demo in time, and I'm not sure what exactly kept offing it (could've been a number of things, too lazy to look through logs atm).

After the second ten-stack of pyrite wore off, FL was down to about ~8-10%, maybe a bit less. From there, I simply kited with Judgment/HoW/Exo/ExecSentence, using Divine Storm as necessary to clear adds.. Even though Judgment is omnidirectional and the other three can be done during a midair jump without losing speed, I found that circle-strafing drastically reduced the rate at which I ended up dazed.

Classes without consistent speed buffs or a lack of ranged abilities would presumably have trouble kiting, but from what I'm reading if you're sitting around 550 ilvl or so, you can probably kill it in two demos.

Duoing, even at raid-finder gear levels, should be trivial. Best of luck!

Comment by Stoneskin76

I am having some problems duoing this achievement and soloing the 10 man version. In both cases I kill Flame Leviathan in a matter of seconds by just throwing Pyrite at it but I do not get the achievement.

I suspect that he is dying so quickly the orbital defences do not activate and therefore I don't get the achievements? Can anyone confirm if you actually have to wait until all 4 defence towers are actually activated or not?

Comment by Xizervexius

Wondering if this is bugged on 25? Just tried it solo on my 90 paladin, and didn't destroy anything on my towards leviathan. I did initially attempt it just using a siege engine, but that failed miserably and I wiped. I then tried again using just a demolisher and quickly destroyed the Flame leviathain, but the only achievement I got was "Shutout 25 player"...and I do not have the Orbit-uary on any of my toons.

edit: nevermind, I'm an idiot. Need to talk to Norgannon and activate hard mode...which is described two posts below this one.......

Comment by WarDevimon

i done the archievement right now,you need do the others before:-Orbital bombardment(25)-Orbital Devastation(25)-Nuked from orbist(25)and last(25)-Orbit-uary(25)you need do 1 for 1 and you going get the archievement(then you need 4 pjs for do the last archivement).And Sorry for my bad english.For nothing.

Comment by Suns

Just soloed on protection warrior in 25. This is heavily nerved in 6.0.2.

Use a destroyer. Stack 3 of the blue stuff, fire primary gun and make sure the debuff does not run out. Fight is less than a minute and you do not even need to move.

Comment by soledad

It is now possible to survive him without vehicle (mine broke before FL died) but it requires some healing.

Comment by whiskeydiet

At lvl 100 (an never having done this raid in the past) i was having some problems. I would keep getting frozen stunned to death to start, then if i kept moving i didnt freeze, but my demolisher would die and i would get my damage debuff stacked so high id die.

I ended up doing it in a demolisher. I would start the fight where the demolishers start (on the left side). Id use all 10 pyrite and let him come to me. Id start moving counter clockwise around the boss area and turn and shoot (thinking id get frozen if i was close to him again). The way i did it easily was just go counter clockwise BACKWARDS in the demolisher while spamming the "1" attack and he died in like 20 seconds and i was never frozen or anything. Hope this helps anyone who was as frustrated as i was while dying to a 70 boss at level 100 haha. Good luck!

Comment by Raxxon

It is possible to get this achievement without any vehicles at all. I'd imagine it would be easier with 2 or 3 people instead of pure solo since you'll be able to flat-out DPS on occasion as it targets other people. In general, from an Enh Shaman POV, run around, keep your Flame Shock applied, spread the DoT to all the crap that spawns from the Lifewards and abuse Fire Nova where possible. I started out burning Bloodlust, not sure if that was optimal in the long run. Run in circles and try to keep FL from bouncing you up on the edge of a wall as that will cause a suicide reset if you accidentally get frozen up there. Probably should have spent more time dropping Searing Totems as well, but I was more interested in the occasional Healing totem drops and keeping things as centered in the ring as I could. Pop wolves for a healing boost when needed and be prepared to suck the full 20 stack of debuff from this guy.

Comment by KIVIT

I think there's a bug here in the Achievement log. When you click on this as part of the Ulduar achievement it doesn't take you to this achievement - but instead it takes you to a different achievement that says you only need 3 towers.

For this achievement you need ALL FOUR TOWERS TO BE ACTIVE AND OPERATIONAL.

As a hunter lvl 100 with a spirit pet this was fairly easy after a bit of practice - you can take it down about 1/2 way with one catapult - try and stay near the repair and you might do more - once it dies you can agro with pet. The key is to keep moving so you don't get frozen from the blue tower - if you do that's it game-over no way out.

Just keep moving and keep your pet heal'd and yourself and you can take it down. The flowers are annoying but what you have to avoid are the flames and the blue ice - don't stand in the beam of light from above at all, just keep moving and watch out for the tank pushing you into the flames in a corner - it will shift agro from pet to you occasionally. Barrage the flowers when you can but not at the expense of keeping moving away from flames and the light beam from above.

Comment by Icykitten

For those of you who want to do this not level capped or are still having trouble, becoming frozen, or anything else. If you die the first time you can bring in another or more vehicles before starting the fight just bring them in just far enough to not get locked out. Did this yesterday on my 90 pally who is holy. I couldn't kill him after my demo would die. So I brought in 2 demos got into another started fight when mine died jumped into another.

Comment by ZenoDwarf

Remember that to get hard mode for this achievement you have to talk to Lore Keeper Norgannon first before talking to Bran to start the event.

Comment by hannibalektr

Just solo'd this easy with my ilvl 700 hunter using the catapult. It took more than the blue pyrite shots as that only took him to half on hard mode. Just keep backing up while you are hitting him with regular shots and he'll eventually go down.

November, 26, 2015

Comment by DarklingThrush

As a Blood DK it was pretty easy to get this without trying at the 10-player level. Going back for my Iron Drake this week so I'll let you know... I couldn't be fussed about the tank, talked to the NPC thinking that was how you started the fight (forgot about Bran), and rode in on my horse. Think I may have been in Frost at first, because I seem to remember using Howling Blast on most of the adds on the way in. Switched to Blood as the boss was coming. Got knocked around a bit, but only took a few minutes to chop him up with my I-level 715 axe. Not quite like the old days, but I went in on a whim and was remembering the fights as I went.

Comment by grundge

Easy achievement to get if you do it like this:

1) Hop on the bike and use speed boost to cruise your way to area where the boss is.

---The point in doing this is that now when you go back you will have 5 demolishers all grouped up on the left side of the pillar when you teleport back to the boss area.--

4) Resurrect. Fly back in. Teleport to the boss area. When you you get there, run to the left side of the pillar and kill the iron dwarves attacking the the demolishers in the back.

5) Once the demos are safe from danger, what you do is you move the each of the 5 demolishers up just far enough where you can target Flame Leviation (you really do not need to move all five, 2 at most). Line them up side by side.

6) Once the demolishers are set up hop in the demolisher on the farthest left (when you leave a vehicle you exit on the right side, so this way when you exit you will basically hop right into the next demolisher.

6) Now attack Flame Leviathan by spamming "Hurl Pyrite Barrel" until you run out of ammo. When you run out, exit the demolisher and hop on the one right next to you and spam "Hurl Pyrite Barrel." Before you run out of ammo, Flame Leviathon will be dead.

This is at level 100. Class doesn't matter. Easy achievement, just have to eat 1 death. Enjoy! :)

Comment by cstober2010

I just solo'd 25m Flame Leviathan with all towers as a lv 100 disc priest (668 ilvl), it took roughly 14 minutes. The whole time, I was hoping there wasn't enrage timer lol. Seems there isn't, or maybe its longer than 14 minutes.

If you are a disc priest, this is how you succeed:First, you will want #1 Mindbender#2 Twist of Fate#3 Glyph of PenanceAngelic Feather helps in this encounter alsoGlyph of Smite is optional, and helps slightly. (but remember, do not get ahead of yourself - smite once only if you can)

Basically, you will be running the entire time - using instant casts mostly. You might have time to smite once but definitely not twice because there are frost beams gunning for you the duration of the fight. If you pause for a second, you will be frozen for a minute and you will die within 30 seconds. So if you can strafe easily, it will help.

Lets get down to business:Be patient, this will take a while. 25m Flame Leviathan w/ all towers has 139Mil HP, I did 215Mil dmg total, so theres a lot of aoe dmg needed too. Constantly move around the room in a square, all the while - keep Holy Fire on cooldown, Penance on FL every time its up (while moving) and keep him dotted with Shadow Word: Pain. We are also using SW:P as a filler on the go, for the instant damage. When the plants spawn, Holy Nova them down. This will do damage to FL, kill the plants quickly AND trigger your Twist of Fate. >>HERES THE IMPORTANT PART<< Flame Leviathan puts a stacking debuff on you when he hits you, it increases the damage you take by A LOT. The way we clear these stacks is casting MindBender and Fade every minute. Flame Leviathan will focus the mindbender, while you can run off - let your stacks drop and then repeat the cycle. If you do this every minute, you will not go above 8 stacks. Keep this strategy up, and he will be dead within 15 minutes.

Sometimes he will drop aggro from your mindbender and come after you, he is really fast with 20 stacks of movement speed. This is where Angelic Feather helps. If you mess up and refresh your debuff stacks, you can use feathers and outrun him then clear your stacks and repeat. Thanks

Comment by dachronic

Just did this today as an affliction warlock. Went in trying hard not to get frozen, but did. The funny part is I have the talent absolute corruption, which makes my corruption DoT become permanent. I sat there frozen for a solid 25 minutes while my corruption slowly killed flame leviathan while I was a block of ice. Got the achievement for 3 car garage and not repairing any vehicles before starting the fight too. :)

Comment by QueenSylvanas

just solo'd this right now... speak to the titan like guy before starting the encounter... then some npcs start some conversations... then simply go to the boss... he will have 136M hp.... Nuke him down and get the achieve... my ilvl when doing this was 850, and the fight was too easy for me...